(Bloomberg) -- The US will continue to work with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization to ensure the spread of a lethal outbreak of mpox in Africa doesn’t develop into a pandemic.
“We’ll stay committed until we bring this outbreak under control,” said John Nkengasong, US senior bureau official for global health security and diplomacy, who previously headed up Africa CDC.
The WHO declared the recent explosion of the viral illness an international health emergency in August.
The US gave about $20 million in March to support mpox response efforts in central and east African countries. Pending notification in the US Congress, an additional $35 million has been promised. The US has also donated 50,000 doses to the Democratic Republic of Congo, the epicenter of the outbreak.
While getting vaccines onto the ground in the most-affected countries has been crucial, it’s equally important to “strengthen systems to make sure that the vaccine that we already have are actually deployed,” Nkengasong said. Unlike with Covid-19 when the African CDC pushed to vaccinate 70% of the population, the mpox inoculation plan is “to be very, very targeted,” he said.
Even though Africa is the only region where the disease is endemic, it didn’t receive vaccines for the virus in 2022 as a less virulent version of the infectious illness spread around the world. At about $100 to $141 per dose, the vaccines are currently very expensive.
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